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17 February 2008

How I Miss You Roi

[email sent today]

Dear Roi,

I know that you are not physically present on this earth in the same way that I am--were you ever?--but I have always needed to do something like what I am doing now. I know that you have passed on, and I have been singing your praises to everyone who will listen or see. When I see all your emails, as I have just now, having collected them together like personal belongings strewn after a storm, you seem to be still alive in the email, like you are there, like you always were, ready to answer, ready to answer with encouragement, inspiration, wisdom. I am not sure if you can imagine just how deeply I am feeling your loss right now, how deeply, how deeply I miss you, how deeply you touched those around you. It's in moments like these that I truly wish I could be dead, that I would celebrate my own dying, that I would look forward to it, that I would even rush it along a little.

I had these dreams, fantasies constantly pushed into the future, of one day coming to the UK, spending time with you, seeing you at work, talking for endless hours, going places, reflecting. I was going to do something totally different, liking mapping an image of an alternative Trinidad that already exists out there, that exists in people like you. Now the project will have to be delayed until I can sit down next to you in the other place to which you have gone.

Roi, I fundamentally believe in certain things, like that somehow you will be handed this message in the other world to which you have gone. When I die, which hopefully will be sooner than I think, not that I expect to be around for long, please do me a favour, a mighty big honour: meet me at the gate. Save me a chair next to you, in your liming circle in the next world, and we can then continue unfinished conversations and begin an eternity of new conversations that we never would have imagined having.

How I miss you Roi, the tragedy of this is all ours. No matter what you were in the middle of when you rushed away, it's ok, let it rest, you did so much, so much, and so much. You did your work, you did it beautifully, there is nothing more for you to do here, be at peace, let the rest of us fools who remain behind, some of us gasping at the sight of your departure, to do our best to walk in your path.